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New owner of Georgia Square Mall promises customer-driven changes

The new owner of the Georgia Square mall promised changes to the property, but nothing major until at least the New Year.

The reasoning is twofold, he said: The upcoming months represent a make-or-break quarter for retailers as customers rush in for their holiday shopping. They also want to get to know their customers and find out what they want, he said.

“We want to try to reach out to the community ... and understand some of the needs and desires of the locals and see if we can meet and respond to that instead of just putting our own vision out there, which may or may not be what the people want,” Charlie Hendon of Hendon Properties said.

It was announced Wednesday that his Atlanta-based company, with an unidentified offshore investor partner, bought the mall as part of a $176 million deal with prior owner CBL & Associates. The deal included malls in Panama City, Fla., and Nashville, Tenn. According to the Athens-Clarke County assessor’s website, the collective value of the three properties on the mall is about $54.5 million. Court transfer documents show his company paid an amount close to that.

The property transfer comes at a time when the Athens area is seeing a deluge of new retail, namely in the Epps Bridge Centre a few miles south of the mall. It drew away some of the mall’s former tenants, including the Gap and Alumni Hall. But Hendon spins the shifting landscape as possibly beneficial to both properties.

He called the shopping center “great” and a place “a lot of people are going to be attracted to.” He said tenants like the Gap typically look for open centers like Epps Bridge. But as that fills up, it’ll continue to be a draw for retailers who’ll look for space in places like the mall.

“We certainly expected there would be some movement from the mall to that center,” Hendon said. “And fortunately for the Epps Bridge Centre, they are basically full and congratulations to them ... but that will lend some opportunity to reach out to some more typical mall tenants or those who aren’t able to otherwise get into the market.”

He said rue21, a clothing retailer, recently said it will move into the mall in coming months. Other national retailers are in talks with the mall as well, Hendon said, though he couldn’t go into detail about ongoing negotiations.

When asked about a story in the Chattanooga Times Free Press where CBL Senior Vice President Katie Reinsidt was attributed with saying the malls sold, including Georgia Square Mall, were old and with sluggish revenues, he called it a misquote. The story from the Times Free Press was later updated on its website to attribute to her that the malls had “stable revenue growth.”

He likewise discounted the idea that malls are doomed in the United States.

“It’s something that is still in the social fabric of Americana and I think it is something that will to be as long as they continue to provide a good shopping experience,” Hendon said.

• Follow business and government reporter Nick Coltrain at Facebook.com/NickColtrainABH or on Twitter @NColtrain.